Slender: The Arrival lands on consoles this week with a free update coming to Steam including tons of terrifying new content. Tucked away in the “Flashback” stage eagle-eyed players can find a very unique teddy that teleports to a bonus hidden stage.

The new console release on 360 and PS3 (plus the free Steam update) adds two new levels. “Homestead” and “Memories” are flashback levels that serve as bonus interludes, showing how some of Slender Man’s victims met their fates.

To access the “Memories” level, start up “Flashback” and explore into the wooded area. Before reaching the building with the VHS tape player and television screen, be on the lookout for a teddy bear.

The teddy bear is leaning against a tree near the cliff ledge on your left. It’s a large stuffed toy so it’s hard to miss if you know what you’re looking for.

Interact with the bear — it glows blue when your reticule hovers over it. Use it and you’ll instantly teleport to the beach where “Memories” takes place.

HorrorScope is a recurring feature exploring the horror genre in gaming and drawing attention to its elements, its tropes, and its lesser-known but still scary titles.

Resident Evil is widely regarded as the franchise that more or less gave birth to the survival horror genre (and certainly named it), and the man behind Resident Evil is Shinji Mikami. The first game by Mikami’s new studio, Tango Gameworks, is a return to form for the developer — it’s The Evil Within, which is being published by Bethesda, is a survival horror game in the flavor of Mikami’s last survival horror title, Resident Evil 4.

In an interview with IGN that simultaneously announced the game and spread out quite a few details about it, Mikami said the reason he wanted to return to survival horror is that there’s just not any left in video games. Survival horror franchises are turning more toward action, he said — and that’s certainly true, given the recent changes to games such as Dead Space 3.

But Mikami isn’t quite correct on one front: Survival horror isn’t dead, dormant or otherwise empty in games right now. The triple-A space might be a desolate wasteland when it comes to horrifying offerings, but there are some serious survival horror contenders in other areas, namely the indie space.

There are some great games out there that are advancing survival horror, even if the Resident Evil and Dead Space franchises have fallen off in that department. Horror is alive and well among smaller developers and even single-person projects, and they’re pushing the genre in some exciting ways. In many of today’s indie horror offerings, you can feel the influence of games such as Resident Evil.

So here are five horror games (in no particular order) we think Shinji Mikami needs to play, to show him that survival horror isn’t dead, and to show him what kind of new experiences the genre he helped create continues to be capable of delivering.

5. Lone Survivor

Lone Survivor has all the hallmarks of classic survival horror games: tight spaces, limited resources, powerful monsters and a weak, lone protagonist. Players are trapped and working to escape a building, and then a town, filled with strange mutant monsters and awful, fleshy walls. It doesn’t help that the character may or may not be going insane. Most of your time in Lone Survivor is spent on simple things — seeking out clean water, edible food or scarce ammunition. Fights occur at times, but they’re always harrowing, usually close to lethal, and often better avoided; sounds a lot like Resident Evil.

Lone Survivor deserves Mikami’s attention because it seems to cover similar ground, both to his older works and to The Evil Within, which apparently deals with perception and psychological terror as much as real threats. It also deserves attention because it’s a side-scrolling, pixel art title by the likes of Jasper Byrne, and it’s really a remarkable game because of that. Byrne tells a strange story and creates a frightening setting with stylized graphics and limited graphical fidelity. The game shows that scares are possible regardless of how realistic a game looks, and that presentation and atmosphere are everything.

Though it’s pretty well-known at this point, Amnesia deserves additional attention from everybody, Mikami included. It’s another survival horror title in which resource management plays a major role — players have to keep their lights burning largely by tracking down and making use of items like tinder. Light is extremely important to keep from, you know, going insane. It’s just as important as herbs and bullets in Resident Evil, but without the added upside of being useful in defending yourself.

Amnesia is actually mostly about hiding and running away, and these are elements that old-school Resident Evil games really only graze. Avoiding battles to conserve ammo is important in the Resident Evil series, but rare is the mechanic in any horror game in which a player has to use concealment and, in most cases, furious prayer to keep from getting ravaged by some monster. Hiding, fleeing and fighting are all elements that make survival horror work in their own unique ways, and Amnesia does a great job of utilizing them to expand its scare repertoire.

Fill up that empty scrapbook in Slender: The Arrival with our collectible locations guide. Most of the hidden posters, flyers, and notes aren’t well hidden but they’re very easy to miss in the darkness.

Each reveals the past of an area, adds flavor to the location, or hints at a dark past. There’s no way to complete the scrapbook in the extras menu without grabbing every one of these items. Don’t stumble around in the shadows, let Game Front shine light on these locations.

Having trouble with Slender Man? Get tips, tricks, and step-by-step instructions for completing all five chapters on our Slender: The Arrival walkthrough. If it’s secrets, easter eggs, or more specific guides you’re looking for get yourself over to Game Front’s compendium of Slender: The Arrival cheats.

Collectible #1: Before entering Kate’s home, walk past the driveway to find a missing person’s poster pinned to a tree outside. This can be hard to find if darkness falls — go inside and grab the flashlight.

Collectible #2: Enter the first door on the left through Kate’s front door to find the family room. Look on the table with the telephone for a small note written in pink.

Collectible #3: The kitchen is located in the back left corner of the first floor. A small note is stuck to the refrigerator.

Collectible #4: Inside the kitchen, look on the table for a memorial flyer.

Part 2: The Eight Pages

Collectible #5: No matter where you spawn, you’ll always appear near a shack with a sign advertising for Canoe Rentals. Grab the sign, it counts as a collectible.

Collectible #6: Just like the previous collectible, this small flyer will always appear near your spawn point. Look on any crates or barrels.

Collectible #7: One final collectible also appears at your starting point. Look for a list of rules pinned to a wall or laid out on a crate or barrel.

Part 3: Into the Abyss

Collectible #8: Look inside the small office trailer to the right of the mine entrance. Stuck to a bulletin board near one of the letters.

Collectible #9: To the left of the mine entrance, there are a handful of concrete tubes strewn about. Look inside to find a letter posted to a pillar beyond the tubes, near the exterior fence.

Collectible #10: Entering the first room of the mine, look for a flyer posted to a fence straight ahead.

Collectible #11: Look for a small room, turn down a path from the previous collectible to find this newspaper clipping framed on the wall.

Part 4: Flashback

Collectible #12: Entering a cave, look on a wooden post near all the insane white scrawling.

Part 5: The Arrival

Collectible #13: After collecting the last letter, continue down the path through the caves. At a turn right, look ahead for one final note on a wooden post near even more mad scribbles on the walls.

Don’t miss a single collectible letter for the scrapbook in Slender: The Arrival. Files are a constant in survival-horror, there’s something about scares that makes us want to sit down with a good note to read.

These letters go into the backstory of Kate — friend of the protagonist in this horror sequel. You’ll witness her degenerating mental state, and unlock more pages to the scrapbook. Don’t miss out on any of the spooky history, get the locations below.

Letter #1: Before entering the house, you might spot a wooden play fort in the backyard. Go inside and grab the flashlight before exploring the playground. Look next to the slide, use the steps around the back.

Letter #2: In the first room through the front door, look on the shelf next to the steps to the second floor.

Letter #3: Starting from the garage, check out the bathroom with a radio.

Part 3: Into the Abyss

Letter #4: One of the hardest letters to find. Before entering the mines, you’ll come across some buildings. Find a house at ground level, without steps, and move to the rocks on the right. Look for an alcove in the rocks with many oddly colored trees. This letter is pinned on one of the tree trunks.

Letter #5: Look on the canisters out front of the house with the stilts.

Letter #6: Check out the office to the right of the mine entrance, pinned to a cork board.

Letter #7: Just as you enter the mines, keep watch for a small control room before reaching the larger open area where you’ll begin looking for generators to activate. The letter is found inside the control room on a desk.

Part 4: Flashback

Letter #8: Leaving the mine, you’ll travel down a tunnel and turn left. Before you make the turn, look on one of the barrels on the right.

Letter #9: Just as you leave the mines into the wilderness, turn left and check out the fence.

Letter #10: Further down the central path, you’ll eventually reach a fork. The right path will lead you up the hills to a wooden pole where the letter is pinned.

Letter #11: Travelling through a partial cave, you’ll come across a building with a television inside. Through the entrance, look left of the television to find the letter stuck to the wall.

Part 5: The Arrival

Letter #12: Once the flashback is complete and you’re leaving the television room, you’ll need to make several turns to reach the radio tower. At the first turn to the right, look for a wooden post with the letter.

Letter #13: The final letter is located near the entrance into the cave. Look for a crate straight ahead with the note.

Never get lost with this map for the second level in Slender: The Arrival. Chapter 2 is an elaborate remake of the original Slender: The Eight Pages, but knowing that forest backwards won’t help when you’ve got a pale creep in a tie on your tale. Slender Man stalks the woods, becoming more and more aggressive as you discover pages. Don’t get turned around, and don’t get lost — check out the page map below.

Shatter the terrifying atmosphere of Slender: The Arrival with some hidden easter eggs and secrets. Here, we’ll provide screenshots, video, and explanations to show off every currently known developer joke. The previous game in the series, Slender: The Eight Pages was full of secrets and unlockables, and the sequel continues the tradition.

Work-In-Progress: Found something we missed? Let us know in the comments.

Secret Glitch Level

Note: As of Patch v1.3 unlocking the Secret Level requires traveling to the missing child poster in Chapter 1 three times. Find the poster, exit the game, and repeat until the level begins at the altered menu screen.

To find a strange secret level, load Part 1: Prologue or start a New Game. Follow these steps:

1. Check out the swing set to the left of the house. A small message will appear.

2. Enter the house and play the piano until a message appears.

3. Turn on the radio, located in the back room behind the garage.

4. Grab the flashlight.

5. Walk outside and look on the post across the street to find a missing person’s flyer.

6. When you get near the flyer, you’ll immediately die. It might take several tries to get this event to occur.

Back at the Main Menu, choose to start a New Game, and get ready for something totally different.

A message will appear: “I’m lost. Can you find me?”

You’ll be able to explore the house in this glitched state. Don’t give up, there are three iterations to the stage. And they’re all surprisingly creepy.

In the prologue, check out the slide behind Kate’s house. Use the steps to climb onto the wooden fort, then step onto the slide. No need to crouch, you’ll walk right through the low barrier.

An achievement will appear — “Achievement Unlocked: Playing With a Slide in a Horror Game”

Don’t Give Him 20$

While exploring the last chapter, you’ll pass through a cave with white scrawling on the walls. Look carefully for one particular message.

On the right, down low, you’ll find this message: “DONT GIVE HIM TWENTY DOLLARS”

The line references a fan-made meme, revealing the real reason Slender Man is chasing you: he wants twenty dollars.

In one of the early releases of Slender: The Eight Pages, there was an unlockable extra mode making the same reference. Get more info on all the secret modes from the first in the horror series on our Slender Game Unlockables Guide.

Yes, Slender: The Arrival has cheat codes. Slender Man doesn’t play by the rules, why should you? Below we’ve got a list of every developer console command, and what they do. We’ve battered the game into submission with rigorous tests to see how the codes work so you don’t have to.

Don’t forget that the developer console was originally intended for debugging purposes, so not every code has a cool effect. “Reload” and “Load” aren’t going to impress, but other codes like “Master” and “Addprogress” might save your digital life. Using and unlocking the console is incredibly easy, even a PC novice won’t have a problem getting these to work. Give a look at the instructions below, and start trolling Slender Man like a pro.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/slender-the-arrival-dev-console-commands-cheat-codes/feed/2Slender: The Arrival Review: Much to Fear, Including Repetitionhttp://www.gamefront.com/slender-the-arrival-review-much-to-fear-including-reptition/
http://www.gamefront.com/slender-the-arrival-review-much-to-fear-including-reptition/#commentsThu, 04 Apr 2013 00:01:31 +0000Phil Hornshawhttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=215376Expanding on the ideas first presented in Slender: The Eight Pages, The Arrival adds story and even more scares, but fails to diversify gameplay.

I snag my third page off the side of a car and go sprinting down the dark dirt path before me. The music pounds in my ears as static intrudes on my vision, hazing the edges of the superimposed video camera’s REC light and timer. He’s close.

Suddenly, a flash, and the towering, suited menace is standing right in front of me. I freak out loudly in my darkened apartment — pause to make sure no neighbors are about to bang on my door — and let out a long breath. Slenderman caught me. Again. And I freaked out. Again. In Slender: The Arrival, I’m starting to think maybe the jump scares are piling on a little thick.

Arrival, the retail remake/sequel/re-release of Mark J. Hadley’s free “Slender: The Eight Pages” Unity game that slunk across the Internet last summer, is a thing to behold. Like its predecessor, it manages to be truly frightening and maintains that horror throughout its entire run. But where The Eight Pages was a perfectly encapsulated experience of thick dread and climactic freakouts — even despite its weak graphics and clunky Slenderman model — The Arrival might be a little too repetitive for its own good. There are a lot of great additions to the game that make it more than its predecessor, but the game would have benefited from its core mechanics expanding along with the scope and graphical fidelity.

It’s hard to divorce Slender: The Eight Pages from Slender: The Arrival, and the latter knows that. There’s a reason the game resonated so well with players on the Internet a year ago; that game tapped something, and The Arrival hopes to tap it again. For the most part, it does a pretty great job — when the game starts on a dirt road through brightly lit autumnal woods, beams of light streaming over distant mountains and through drifting leaves, The Arrival puts you on edge by messing with sound design. You’re trudging along in relative silence, only to suddenly realize the crunch of sand and stones beneath your feet isn’t coming from beneath your feet. You spin, searching for the source of the footsteps, but none presents itself.

You’re being hunted from Minute One in Slender: The Arrival, and that the game manages to keep you feeling that edginess through its entire (albeit somewhat short) run-time is a feat unto itself.

But you don’t always know what’s hunting you, or exactly why, or exactly with what veracity. As you continue down that dirt road, information starts to flutter before you by way of notes and signs you find along the path. When darkness falls and you enter a nearby house, you realize you’re supposed to be there — you’re Lauren, searching for your friend Kate, who was corresponding with a mutual friend CR by email and letters. Kate and CR were experiencing hallucinations. Something was wrong.

Brave the new face of horror with our Slender: The Arrival walkthrough, guiding you through each terrifying environment. The creator of Slender: The Eight Pages and Blue Isle Studios are bringing Slenderman into the modern age, with detailed new graphical fidelity to enhance the atmosphere of each location you’ll explore throughout the campaign.

Slenderman stalks behind while you’re forced to collect items or switches, and Slenderman isn’t the only monster you’ll face. Get our recommendations for survival and how to navigate each expansive zone, just don’t panic. Check out the guide below.

Welcome to the cheats page for Slender: The Arrival, where you’ll find all our extra pages for the horror sequel. Many of our tricks and extras for Slender: The Eight Pages still apply here, but we’ll still be on the lookout for any info to make survival in this terrifying adventure slightly easier. Because cheats are so rare, we’ve decided to throw anything special and secret into this category. Keep checking back as we update with easter eggs, unlockables, glitches, and anything else that’ll keep you from meeting a grisly fate.

Slender gets a new look (as does everything else) in Slender: The Arrival.

When Slender: The Eight Pages first hit the Internet, it was a pretty simple-looking title, whipped up in the Unity engine as a means of messing around by creator Mark J. Hadley. And despite its low-fidelity visuals, Slender went on to terrify many players.

I’ve discussed before why I like Slender, and why Hadley’s little game was so effective: It’s a powerful marriage of sound design and limited senses. Even though you’re moving through a fairly ugly digital world from a first-person perspective, the original Slender was oppressive, making it difficult to see, difficult to navigate, and difficult to protect yourself. Sound effects and music that ramped up over time only created an additional expectation of dread, and when the game started to throw in the lurking form of Slenderman and the associated jump scares that came with him, it hit a number of very frightening chords.

Slender: The Eight Pages was enough of a success that Hadley’s Parsec Productions has partnered with Blue Isle Studios to create a follow-up project called Slender: The Arrival. It also includes work from the writing team behind “Marble Hornets,” a well-known serial YouTube Slenderman project, and boasts a serious graphical update over the original Unity title.

While Slender: The Arrival is going to be a much larger and more involved game than The Eight Pages, and will include story elements and the like, the original format for Slender is still pretty effective, as numerous games indie titles copying the formula seem to attest. The Arrival is currently available for pre-order for $5 (which knocks off half the price), and nabbing it nets players access to a beta version of the game as well. The beta doesn’t include much in the way of new content, but it does take the original Slender: The Eight Pages idea and move it into The Arrival’s game world. It’s basically a much more beautiful version of the original game, and for the price of $5, it’s definitely worth a pre-order of The Arrival.

If It’s Not Broke…

The beta version of The Arrival is more or less the same game as Slender: The Eight Pages. Players are dropped into a strange outdoor environment with only the ability to sprint and a flashlight, with the goal of finding and securing eight pieces of paper scattered throughout what seems to be a park. The area is filled with different structures and elements: there’s woods, outbuildings, rusting vehicles and more, all of which serve as landmarks when exploring.

As time goes on and note start to get collected, things being to escalate. Probably the spookiest part about the game is the expert way in which Slender uses music and sound. The game starts out almost utterly silent, with only the crunching of shoes on the path and distant noises to break it. Pick up your first note and suddenly bass begins to hammer like a heartbeat. Instantly, it’s communicated that something is hunting you.

The musical cues in The Arrival’s beta are pretty much exactly the same as those in the original title. Along with the original premise of chasing down the game’s eight hidden notes, the beta release hits all the same notes as the original Slender. What made the original frightening is maintained here in working order, so if you’ve never experienced the original Slender before, The Arrival’s version will give the same basic experience, but augmented. That bodes well for the final release of the game, as well. Hadley demonstrated in the original Slender that he understood the ways to generate a foreboding atmosphere, and the musical cues and sound effects of the game are really what drives the action. The old model of the distant Slenderman was pretty poor; it didn’t move, it didn’t react, and seen in any sort of real light or up close, it resembled a giant wooden doll. But it was the pounding sounds of the music, signaling that the stalker was growing nearer, that really made the game frightening. All that fear makes the jump into the beta version for The Arrival as well.

11 minutes of beta footage for Slender: The Arrival have been released, and they’re fiendishly enticing.

The video showcases the upcoming sequel/remake of Slender: The Eight Pages, set to release March 26 for $10 (or $5 pre-order), which comes with greatly improved graphics and a storyline.

Some Slender players expressed concerns that the original game worked due to its simplicity, and that fancy graphics would ruin that effect. Check out the footage to see for yourself.

I don’t think the improved visuals take away from the experience at all — they add to it. I’ve never been a fan of distortion and fancy post-processing effects in most games, because I seek visual clarity, but they work perfectly in here, where the objective is to introduce fear by messing with your ability to see what’s happening.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/slender-the-arrival-beta-footage-vid/feed/0Slender: The Arrival Gets a New (Gameplay) Trailerhttp://www.gamefront.com/slender-the-arrival-gets-a-new-gameplay-trailer/
http://www.gamefront.com/slender-the-arrival-gets-a-new-gameplay-trailer/#commentsMon, 24 Dec 2012 17:46:12 +0000Phil Hornshawhttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=199308We finally get to see Slender: The Arrival in action.

Slender: The Eight Pages may have been 20 minutes long and little more than a proof-of-concept of the Unity Engine, but it ended up being one of my favorite games of the year because it so thoroughly nails horror. That perfect little experience is getting a retail release/sequel as creator Mark J. Hadley’s Parsec Productions teams up with Blue Isle, and now we can see a little of that game in action.

It’s called Slender: The Arrival, by the way, and it has some serious Slenderman cred behind it already, with the writing team from Marble Hornets involved in the story. The trailer below is the first we’ve seen of the game actually in action, and it appears that the Marble Hornets influence on the Slenderman mythos — namely, masked mad-people under the creature’s control — is exerting itself in the game. That means more crazy s–t to be afraid of as you’re wandering around in the dark with only your flashlight.

Slender: The Arrival is due in the early part of next year. We’re waiting with baited breath and flashlight tightly gripped.

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/slender-the-arrival-gets-a-new-gameplay-trailer/feed/0Marble Hornets Teams Up with Blue Isle on Slender: The Arrivalhttp://www.gamefront.com/marble-hornets-teams-up-with-blue-isle-on-slender-the-awakening/
http://www.gamefront.com/marble-hornets-teams-up-with-blue-isle-on-slender-the-awakening/#commentsTue, 04 Dec 2012 23:27:11 +0000Phil Hornshawhttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=196061The Slenderman veterans are going to help make the game's story as scary as possible.

If you’re a Slenderman fan, you’re likely aware of Marble Hornets, a series of Slenderman videos uploaded to YouTube, and a story that helped create a large part of the Slenderman mythos. If you’re a fan of MH, you’re going to be excited about this: the writing team behind those videos is partnering with the team working on Slender: The Arrival.

According to a press release, MH’s writers, Joseph DeLage, Troy Wagner and Tim Sutton, are working on The Arrival’s story to create a “deeply immersive and truly frightening storyline for The Arrival. The creative input from The Marble Hornets team is adding layers of depth and detail to our game, The Arrival, and we can’t wait for our fans to immerse themselves in this new multi-layered storyline.”

]]>http://www.gamefront.com/marble-hornets-teams-up-with-blue-isle-on-slender-the-awakening/feed/0Slender’s Woods: Short, Simple and Seriously Scaryhttp://www.gamefront.com/slenders-woods-short-simple-and-seriously-scary/
http://www.gamefront.com/slenders-woods-short-simple-and-seriously-scary/#commentsSat, 10 Nov 2012 01:50:54 +0000Phil Hornshawhttp://www.gamefront.com/?p=191649Another take on the Slenderman mythos, and this one includes a story.

Slender: The Eight Pages touched something in amateur game developers across the Internet, it seems. A relatively simple game created in the Unity engine a single developer, Slender is a scary game — and a masterful one when it comes to instilling fear, despite its simplistic graphics and simplistic gameplay.

Among the games inspired by Mark J. Hadley’s Slender title is Slender’s Woods, another title created more or less by one person with a little help from others on composing and modeling. Developer Zykov Eddy notes that Slender’s Woods is inspired by the original, but takes a different approach, and indeed, Eddy’s game manages to hit a lot of the same notes as Hadley’s while presenting a new and different experience.

Where Slender’s Woods distances itself from the original is in the portrayal of (something of) a story and characters. The original Slender implies a story only vaguely: Players fetch eight pages from around a strange wooded area, and those pages imply that someone other person who came before, informed on the threat of the malevolent creature living in the woods that threatens the player, left those pages behind to be found.

Slender’s Woods goes one better than that, creating something of a protagonist through inner monologue text, and implying another character through found documents in much the same way. But both characters are more fleshed out, to a degree, and the progression of Slender’s Woods is much more linear and systematic. You don’t just wander around until you die in Slender’s Woods, which is definitely a step forward for the formula.

The premise of Slender’s Woods has players taking on the role of a man who has moved out to a secluded cabin in a wooded area. One night, he hears strange sounds outside and heads out to investigate, and quickly finds some paranormal stuff happening — suddenly a note appears on the porch, the door isn’t just locked but barred by an iron grate, and the man is afflicted by painful headaches and momentary, staticky blindness.

And so the player is forced to head out into the forest in search of a way to safety. The map is fairly simple — a big circle with short distances between locations — and players basically can basically follow paths to the west to get to where they’re going. The first stop is the construction site identified in the note on the porch, where players find a new bit of information and another key. The second note directs them to a set of nearby underground tunnels, and now we find ourselves retracing the footsteps of a character called Cody, who apparently went through this same nightmare before us.

So Slender’s Woods has players “solving puzzles,” although these invariably mean heading to different locations and finding keys. Each key lets you enter a new area, none of which are especially detailed or large, but which each have their own distinctions and creepiness. The underground tunnels are filled with pipes that vent steam at intervals and strange, distant sounds; the mansion weird paintings and scary creaking sounds emanating from nearby rooms; the saw mill gives the illusion of being a safe interior location, but really is mostly open.

Where the game excels isn’t with its minimal puzzles, which are easily solved, but with the way it builds tension. It doesn’t take long until you find yourself actively evading the Slenderman as you go sprinting through the game. The puzzles are simple but just involved enough to put obstacles in your way, and this makes things harrowing when you know the enemy is nearby, actively hunting you.

Things ramp up over time pretty beautifully, with Slenderman becoming more and more aggressive and present. Like the original game, you get an indication of the enemy’s location based on static in your vision, and staring at him will result in losing altogether, which keeps you fleeing pretty much constantly. And Slender’s Woods mixes in some other interesting elements: The game suggests that what’s happening is paranormal in nature, but through a few great moments with slick presentations, you start to wonder if the protagonist isn’t hallucinating a lot of the events.

Slender’s Woods is by no means perfect, suffering from a few issues of translation in its dialog, for one thing. And it’s really simple; under other circumstances, it would probably be too simple to be especially interesting. But it does excel in slick use of sound design and in hitting a few important set piece moments that ramp up the threat of the Slenderman and put players into tight spots. The whole game is about running away, but there are some great moments in which the design makes you feel as if you’re only barely escaping, even though, objectively, it’s probably not true.

For an effort by a single designer with a little (or a lot of) help, Slender’s Woods manages to drive the scares and provides just enough framework and context to be something of a complete experience. It’s free, and it’s impressive, and you should check it out.